Throughout the last few decades, diseases that spill over from animals to humans have been on the rise. What’s behind their increase, and can we do anything to combat these dangerous foes? Join scientists as they investigate the rise of spillover viruses like Zika, Ebola and Nipah, and learn...

What determines how many species live in a given place? Or how many individuals live in a given habitat? Answers to these basic questions eluded ecologists in the early 1960s. It took bold experiments by Robert Paine and James Estes to establish the importance of keystone species in regulating...

Alzheimer's disease strikes at the core of what makes us human: our capacity to think, to love and to remember. The cause of Alzheimer’s and whether it can be stopped is one of the greatest medical mysteries of our time. Alzheimer’s ravages the minds of over...

In The Biology of Skin Color, Penn State University anthropologist Dr. Nina Jablonski walks us through the evidence that the different shades of human skin color—from light pink to dark brown—are evolutionary adaptations to the varying intensity of ultraviolet radiation in different...

These five short films, produced in conjunction with The New York Times, bring to life five historical scientific discoveries and the people behind them: Alfred Russel Wallace and his contribution to the concept of natural selection; Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's microscope; Alfred Wegener and the...

It's a mystery on a global scale: five times in Earth's past, life has been nearly extinguished, the vast majority of plants and animals annihilated in a geologic instant. What triggered these dramatic events? And what might they tell us about the fate of our world? Mass Extinction: Life at...

Diseases that were largely eradicated in the United States a generation ago-including whooping cough, measles, mumps-are returning, in part because nervous parents are skipping their children's shots. Vaccines—Calling the Shots takes viewers around the world to track epidemics, explore...

Ten thousand years ago, corn didn’t exist anywhere in the world, and until recently scientists argued vehemently about its origins. Today the crop is consumed voraciously by us, by our livestock, and as a major part of processed foods. So where did it come from? Popped Secret: The Mysterious Origin...

Stunning fossil finds have recently revealed the fascinating stories of evolution’s greatest transitions – from fish that gained the land, to reptiles that took to the air, and primates that walked on two legs.
The Great Transitions film trilogy features leading evolutionary paleontologists –...

Growing up near Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique, Tonga Torcida has dreamt of becoming a tour guide at the park. But when he meets and gets to work with ant biologist E.O. Wilson in the park, his views of the world around him—and of his future—drastically change. Torcida decides to pursue a...

Have you ever wondered why the human body looks the way it does? Why we walk on two legs instead of four? Why we can see in color but have a lousy sense of smell?
Your Inner Fish delves deep into the past to answer questions like these. The three-part series reveals a startling truth: Hidden within...

Our planet has millions of species, including thousands of mammals, fish, birds, and reptiles, and even more butterflies, beetles, and other animals, each adapted to one of an enormous variety of habitats. The richness and diversity of life raises two of the most profound questions in biology: How...

James Watson and Francis Crick collected and interpreted key evidence to determine that DNA molecules take the shape of a twisted ladder—a double helix. The film presents the challenges, false starts, and eventual success of their bold chase, culminating in the classic 1953 publication in...

This series of five short films features unforgettable examples of the evolutionary process in action. Produced by award-winning filmmakers, each film is an adventure of discovery. From the postglacial lakes in southern Alaska to the highlands of East Africa, fascinating creatures and pioneering...

The disappearance of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period posed one of the greatest, long-standing scientific mysteries. This three-act film tells the story of the extraordinary detective work that solved it. Representing a rare instance with which many different scientific disciplines...